2 weeks Ago
Mario Savio speaking from the top of a police car. Photo by Steven Marcus, courtesy of The Bancroft Library The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley was notably the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s, when students protested the university's limits on political activities. It would come to set the stage for mass student protests for the Vietnam War and would give students unprecedented leverage –- but as a freshman only weeks into his college career, Rod Panos couldn't have possibly foreseen that.
"I had been at Cal only a matter of weeks, really, by the time it first started," he recalled. Panos studied chemistry at UC Berkeley, beginning his career in 1964, and went on to earn a Ph.D.
"Many of my classes were right near Sproul Plaza. I didn't find it unusual that there were people informing me of various things along the Plaza –- a chess club, orientation information items." But one table drew a bit more attention –- one that talked about the limits being imposed on certain groups who were setting up tables in that very area.
One could assume that discussions Panos overheard were by student activists who had been involved with the Freedom Riders and voter registration in Mississippi –- activists who set up tables on campus to...
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